The worst kept secret of the 2026 campaign is coming up for announcement this week on 4/24, as Jon Hansen and Karla Lems have vaguely promised a political announcement (parroting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign slogan of “stronger together”), at exactly the same time that they put up a link to an adedot campaign website that says that they’re running for Governor & Lt Governor:
Digging down a bit further, if you launch into the website, we notice some.. weirdness:
Check amount $25, $50, etc is pretty normal. But then we get into $5000 and $10,000 “maximum per election cycle? “That’s not the campaign finance limit for statewide candidates. No, not at all. Where on earth are they getting that?
If you go to the Secretary of State’s website, they even have a little chart which lays it out:
That’s $4000. As Arch Beal would say – Whoa Whoa Whoa! Where are they getting the $5,000 and $10,000 from that they’re soliciting for. Well, you have to go to the bottom of the web page. And you get the explanation:
This is not a state gubernatorial campaign committee that they’re slapping their names on and using to run for office. They’re running as Hansen/Lems for Governor, but donations are being routed directly to a Political Action Committee. They’re entirely skipping over a regular campaign committee that you or I would use, and the mechanism they are using to raise funds for their gubernatorial campaign right out of the gate is a PAC who can take far bigger checks:
That’s where they are getting the 10k limits from. In fact, they even state it on their donation website.. The People First PAC solely supports the Hansen Lems 2026 election campaign. Well, that’s sneaky.
Hansen & Lems seem to be skipping the basic campaign committee entirely for the purpose of raking in higher amounts of cash then they could normally take from individuals – $10,000 a person, versus $4000. In fact, it appears that they don’t even have a regular campaign committee set up at this time.
Given this focus on wealthy donors, maybe their slogan needs a little editing. Instead of “Stronger Together,” it should be “Wealthy Donor PACs are Stronger Together?”
Or something like this..
Hansen oversees the worst legislative session in years and
Lems leads the way to destroy economic development in SD????????????????
Who the h#ll would vote for these two miscreants? Other than fellow miscreants.
I wonder if Hansen is going to pay himself a salary out of this PAC, like he did with the No on G abortion campaign.
The kids gotta eat…
Don’t they oppose big money in campaigns? Or just out of state money? I’ll bet they will accept outside money too.
“For the people!”….(the ones with money please)
The hypocrisy of these folks is astounding.
The way some worry about hypocrisy of others is astounding.
Hansen is notorious for using “big” in everything for fear tactics. Big Pharma? Big government, etc.
In fact, Hansen has fought against increasing campaign finance donor limits by calling it “Big Money” on the House floor in years past, but now we know why. He wants to keep it low for those who follow the rules, but keep the gray area large for him and his cronies.
Rules for thee, but not for me….again!
Let me a throw a curve ball on this announcement.
Why is Jon Hansen & Karla Lems announcing together?
HB1164 which would allow this to happen, they both voted against the bill. They were satisfied with allowing the convention to nominate the Lt. Governor.
Remember, the chair of the GOP, Jim Eschenbaum went on the Senate State Affairs Committee to testify against that. Does that mean they are defying their own leadership?
That’s funny! They both also voted to Lock up Librarians.
If Hansen continues to campaign on property tax issues someone needs to ask him why all the property tax bills went through state affairs and were killed. I’m guessing he didn’t want the huge problem solved.
The property tax relief bills were killed because with any meaningful property tax relief they lose all leverage with their school voucher scheme.
So what’s to keep every candidate campaign from pulling this trick? Are we going to see the legislators bypass the candidate committee campaign finance requirements and just use a PAC from now on? Where does it end? The people so concerned about election integrity are too busy counting ballots to comment on this?
More American Exceptionalism.